What is a Toolbox ServerTemplate?

Table of Contents

Background Information

You may notice several ServerTemplates in the MultiCloud Marketplace called "Toolbox" templates, which are not used to launch servers. Why are they called ServerTemplates? What purpose do they serve?

Answer

In some legacy RightScale Dashboard releases, you could not publish RightScripts to the MultiCloud Marketplace by themselves. Instead, you had to add the scripts to a ServerTemplate and then publish the ServerTemplate. These ServerTemplates strictly served as containers for useful RightScripts. To help distinguish them from other ServerTemplates, they include a "Toolbox" designation in their names (e.g. "EBS Stripe Toolbox") to denote that the template is not used to launch server instances. Rather, it contains a collection of RightScripts that you can use with other ServerTemplates.

In the current editions of the RightScale Dashboard and MultiCloud Marketplace, you can publish RightScripts and MultiCloud Images (MCIs) by themselves. You no longer have to publish them with a ServerTemplate. Similarly, you can also import RightScripts into the Dashboard by themselves. You no longer have to download the ServerTemplate containing those RightScripts in order to access them. RIghtScale, however, will continue to publish "Toolbox" ServerTemplates, mainly because it's a convenient way to group sets of related RightScripts.

How do I use Toolbox ServerTemplates?

Go to Design -> MultiCloud Marketplace -> ServerTemplates. Perform a keyword search for 'Toolbox' to see a list of all available Toolbox ServerTemplates. You can also view each ServerTemplate's underlying RightScripts to verify their functionality. If you find a ServerTemplate that contains RightScripts that you wish to use in your own ServerTemplates, simply import the ServerTemplate. After the ServerTemplate is imported, you will have access to all of its RightScripts (under Design -> RightScripts). You can then add the RightScripts to your own ServerTemplates and run them accordingly.

In the MultiCloud Marketplace, you will find "Toolbox" ServerTemplates published by RightScale for EBS, MySQL, Memcached, New Relic, and more.